Chicago Squeeze
J.R Chase
Smashwords Edition
Copyright 2010 J.R. Chase
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This book is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or historical events, is purely coincidental.
ISBN: 978-0-9699454-1-3
Chapter 1
As soon as I collapsed the tripod, I heard Clem outside. He let loose a quick trio of low barks, as if he caught a glimpse of rabbit fur.
I turned around and a hundred fissures spread across the windshield. The sound cracked sharp through the van, bouncing off its steel walls and hitting my ears half a dozen times before the man outside started shouting.
I stepped from the surveillance stool in back and peered out the front windshield of the van. I saw Rodriguez wind-up to take another swing with his splintered baseball bat. As the bat reached the peak of its arc behind his head, he started to lose his balance.
Clem had latched onto his pant leg and Rodriguez was struggling against the physics of a ninety-pound basset pulling his leg out from under him.
I heard Rodriguez swear at Clem, and I saw him attempting to re-focus his rage – and his bat – on the hound.
I jumped out of the driver’s door. As the bat started down toward Clem, I jammed my right forearm up and into Rodriguez’s wrists.
His arms stopped dead and the downward momentum threw the bat from his hands. It hit the ground next to Clem’s ear and tumbled end over end.
I straightened my right arm and grabbed Rodriguez by the hair and pulled his head down toward my raised leg. His nose crumpled against my knee cap and I felt a warm liquid soak my pant leg. I pulled him back up until his face was across from mine. His nose was a pulpy red, and blood had painted his mouth and cheeks.
“Don’t ever fuck with my dog,” I said.
His mouth opened and closed a few times but the most he could manage was a string of saliva. His eyes were glazed and wooly, trying to focus through overflowing tear ducts. Same look most people get when their nose is broken for the first time.
By the third or fourth time, you hardly feel it.
Clem released Rodriguez’ pant leg and stood back, panting, his tongue hanging off to the right beyond his jowls.
Dogs love this shit.
I released the bleeding, Latino heartbreaker, and he crumpled onto his knees. I clutched his face in my hands and placed one of my thumbs below his right eye, and one of my thumbs above his right eye. I pulled his eyelid wide open and looked carefully at his pupil.
Dilated.
“You’ll live,” I said, wiping my hands across his coat, avoiding the gold cross that had bounced loose from inside his shirt. I heard him mumbling at me but I couldn’t understand a word. Sounded like he lost a tooth as well.
Poor fella.
I tossed the bat in the van through the open driver’s door, then lifted Clem inside. I jumped in and closed the door.
“This is the last domestic case, I swear,” I said to myself.
I tossed Clem a piece of jerky and he swallowed it down. He panted, satisfied, like he’d just ran a fox into a corner or down a hole. Didn’t care or didn’t realize that he had just been a few seconds away from meeting the thick end of a Louisville Slugger. Probably wouldn’t matter to him anyway – hounds live for the hunt, and they’d die inside without it.
•••
It took thirty minutes to leave the manicured lawns and pretty homes of Old Town behind. I could hardly see between the fresh cracks in the windshield, forced me to drive like a granny on valium.
Goddam Rodriguez.
Wasn’t long before we were into the tired jungle of Roseland, where every other house has bars in the windows and pit bull droppings in the backyard.
About once a month I decide to move away to a decent neighborhood like Elmwood Park or Norridge.
But my old man built the house with his own hands, and paid for it by slaving twenty-five years in a steel factory. My mom lived there for a decade by herself after pop died, and when she went into the hospital for the last time, she apologized to me with her last breath.
Sorry that the only thing we can leave you is that old house in Roseland. You’re my prince, and you deserve a castle, my boy.
Breaks a guy’s heart hearing stuff like that.
I parked in the front and walked around to the back door. As I came around the corner, I saw that the welcome mat was folded over. It was half-perched against the door, as if it had tried to wrap itself around the leg of a clumsy intruder.
Clem’s wet nose picked-up something foul, because the hair on his back went up and he started with his deep growl, the one he reserved for serious occasions.
I bent down and shushed him quietly, rubbing behind his ears with my left hand, slipping the .32 Beretta Tomcat from my ankle-holster with my right. I racked the slide and loaded the first of seven rounds into the chamber.
“This night just keeps getting better,” I whispered, as the swirling wind snatched my words and tossed them up into the dark sky.
Chapter 2
I stayed low and crept under the windowsill. I released the safety from the semi-auto, raised my head, and surveyed the living room through the dusty panes.
The lamp on the sofa table was still on, but I couldn’t see anyone or anything out of the ordinary. The stairwell was so dark that someone could have been standing at the top of the steps, looking right back at me with lunatic eyes, and I wouldn’t have seen him.
Clem had made his way to doorstep, sniffing the welcome mat. His deep growls sounded like he had a handful of gravel lodged in his throat. He started to paw at the door with his stubby front leg.
I joined him and tried the handle.
Locked.
I slipped in the key and the old hinges creaked as I entered first, holding Clem behind me by the collar. As I stepped through the back entrance and into the living room, I saw a bird’s nest of auburn hair planted on a sofa pillow. Five and a half feet later were some freshly painted toenails. I recognized the color – fruit sangria red.
I bent down and whispered in Clem’s ear, “Go get her, boy.”
He launched himself onto the couch, his heavy ears and folds of skin flapping like bird wings. He went for the face and fired his tongue into her open mouth.
Two points.
Ginny spit, coughed and twisted all at the same time.
“You sneaky sonofabitch, Clem,” she said, as she sat up and gave the hound a bear hug. “Jesus, you need a bath.”
“Thought I had uninvited guests,” I said, holding up the Tomcat before placing it on the sofa table with the safety engaged.
“I dropped by with some take-out, then I saw your kitchen,” she said, nodding toward the pile of freshly washed dishes on the counter.
“You didn’t have to do that. I usually get Clem to lick everything clean.”
“Ha ha,” she yawned. “You’re gonna get roaches if don’t invest in a dishwasher.”
“They moved in a long time ago. They keep to themselves mostly, pay the rent on time...”
“Even when we were together you were always a smart ass,” she said, rising from the couch and neatly folding the blanket that had covered her mid-section.
“Thanks Ginny. The place looks good.”
“Don’t mention it, Jack.”
She tied back her hair and my eyes lingered on the slope of her cheek, how it framed her delicate mouth and dimpled chin.
Most guys would’ve looked down about a foot lower, but me, I’m a jaw man.
She gathered her purse and sweater, slipped on her shoes and headed for the door.
“Leaving so soon?” I asked.
“I’ve got a seven o’clock tomorrow morning.”
“Sofa folds out. Might even have clean sheets.”
“It’s not the sheets I worry about, Jack,” she said.
“I know, it’s the roaches.”
She let slip a little sigh, kissed me on the cheek, and disappeared out the door and into the night.
“Goodnight Virginia,” I said, but I don’t think she heard me.
•••
I first met Ginny eight years back when I was still a detective with the CPD. She was fairly new to the city, a trauma counselor who the department used for family members of murder victims.
At the precise moment when a person’s life was collapsing around them, Ginny would catch the pieces. She was the eye of their personal hurricane, peace and calm in a world of turmoil.
They would fall into her arms sobbing, and she’d comfort them with a tender touch and a soft voice. She would lend them her strength and a warm heart. In return she gained a quiet confidence, a deep strength that only comes from helping others stand-up through a crisis. I suspect that Ginny had guided countless souls back from the shadows of despair by wandering there herself.
That’s what made her so beautiful to me.
It felt like a dream when she finally agreed to move in with me six years ago. Her arrival had aired out the dusted memories that had lingered in the house since my folks passed on.
She gently folded the hand-knitted afghans and scraped off the blue flowered wallpaper. She tore out the carpets, and laid bare the hardwood floors that hadn’t seen a ray of light in thirty years.
A few buckets of varnish and paint and it was done. The house – like so many of Ginny’s patients – had been brought back into the world by a woman’s touch.
We lived here together. We ate, laughed, cried, got drunk, celebrated, made love. Did all the things a couple does, never noticing the days roll on by like driftwood on the waves.
She talked about marriage once. Next day I brought Clem home from the pound.
She didn’t bring it up again, probably worried that she’d have to endure another hound puppy peeing on the carpet.
Things went that way for five years. Then the earthquake hit, opened a crevasse big enough to swallow us whole.
A few bad cops were taking cash from dealers in exchange for a blind eye. They were the kind of men who had started their career on the right side of the law, but crossed over for a lousy car, some nice suits and a condo overlooking the lake.
Devil got a real bargain for those souls.
It didn’t take long for Internal Affairs to catch up with them. It also didn’t take long for IA to launch the witch hunt, and they took each move right from the Salem play book.
It took only a moment for a guilty cop under a bright light bulb to start naming names for an ambitious IA clown drooling for a promotion. Just my luck that one of those names whispered in that sweltering interrogation room was Jack Riley.
It didn’t much matter that IA couldn’t scrape up a single piece of credible evidence against me, other than a statement from a guy trying real hard to sidestep a blue balled cellmate at the Chicago MCC.
So after fifteen years of blood, bodies, stakeouts and the occasional shootout, I was stripped of my badge and sidearm in plain view of my colleagues.
Then I was escorted out the back door with a small cardboard box half-filled with pictures, some framed awards, and an old pair of shoes.
A darkness swept over me and I could taste the bile churning deep in my gut. My captain didn’t go to bat for me, didn’t want to upset IA. Most of my fellow cops looked at the cracks in the lino or the dots on the ceiling as I left the precinct for the last time, one IA robot on each of my arms.
I found that betrayal is like a cancer that spreads through its victim, suffocating everything good and decent. Before long, the betrayed appears as a hard, black mass, ugly and infectious.
That’s when I asked Ginny to leave, before she could be tainted by bitterness.
Before I could ruin her.
It was almost a year ago to the day when she left the house, but she never abandoned me. Once a week she makes an excuse to drop by and see how I’m doing.
Or maybe it’s Clem she worries about.
Either way, it’s always good to see her.
•••
I walked into the kitchen, opened the fridge and grabbed the pile of Styrofoam cartons neatly stacked on the top shelf. I ate a few mouthfuls of cold stir-fried rice and sweet-and-sour chicken, shut the lids, and saved the rest for breakfast.
I took a short, heavy glass from the cupboard, blew out the dust, and poured it halfway with a cheap, single highland malt scotch. It was bland and void of character, just the way I like it. I don’t drink for pleasure – just to get a decent night’s sleep.
After two more shots, I flipped through my old man’s record collection. I stopped when I saw Sinatra’s face looking back at me, a red tear streaming down his left cheek.
I slipped the vinyl from its sleeve, careful not to touch the playing surface. I held it up and blew off the specs of dust that had settled onto the classic record.
I placed the LP on the auto turntable and watched the arm swing over and set the gold needle on the lead-in groove. The speakers crackled with old Blue Eyes crooning about the places and dreams that only the lonely knew about.
I could almost see my old man sitting on the velvet sofa, his face stained with carbon dust and his eyes closed. His head would be aimed at the ceiling, bobbing along to the music. He and Frank would fly off to the moon, leaving behind the aches and dried sweat that each day left for him.
I took my time going up the stairs, letting the rhythm twitch my body and slide my feet across the steps. When I reached the bedroom, I stripped down to my boxers and buried myself under a ratted duvet.
A moment later the bed rocked sideways as Clem landed with a grunt, then spun and dug and snorted before he got comfortable hanging his head off the foot of the bed.
I drifted off just as Sinatra started crooning Willow Weep for Me.
•••
I awoke exhausted, as if I’d slept only a few minutes. I didn’t recall any nightmares, but my body had reacted to something terrifying. My muscles ached from whatever images had been projected from my subconscious during the small hours of the morning.
I threw on a pair of wool slacks, a white shirt and a maroon tie that I knotted loose around my neck. I grabbed my one good sport coat on the way downstairs.
The living room was doused in soft sunlight that filtered through the sheer curtains. The evening wind had blown itself out, giving the city a crisp, autumn morning. The air hung cool and still, awaiting the events of the day.
The smell of grease and oyster sauce seeping from the kitchen put me off breakfast, so I grabbed the keys to the MGB and whistled for the hound. He lumbered down the stairs and out the back door for his morning constitution.
I unlocked the shed and swung open the barn-style doors. I wrestled with the vinyl top of the ‘79 MG convertible until it finally folded down and back behind the two seats.
I’d bought the car at one of those Sunday meets, the kind where everyone who owns the same make shows up and talks about parts, car wax, horsepower and football.
I wasn’t particularly interested in MG’s – they just happened to be gathered in the park by the Lincoln Zoo, Clem’s favorite romping grounds. The guy who owned it had just finished restoring it.
I asked him why he would sell it after spending two years of his weekends and evenings in the garage with it. He shrugged, said he had two more to finish at home.
I eased myself into the cracked leather, started the engine, and backed out of the shed and into the alley. Before taking off, I reached over and opened the passenger door.
“You better bag that up,” I hollered.
A moment later he waddled over to the car and hopped into the passenger seat, sat-up and looked straight out the windshield. I reached past him, closed the door, and hit the gas. The British four-banger hummed out a whirring crescendo as we bounced over the rough and pot-holed pavement of Roseland.
The air was sharp against my face as it swirled around the windshield and created a whirlwind inside the cabin. The sun’s rays were bright but void of warmth, like a politician’s smile.
Twenty minutes later I passed Gage Park and pulled into an alley just before 51st Street. I parked in the spot marked ‘reserved’ and Clem and I entered my office through the back door.
The price I paid for the place was almost criminal. A small, two-story commercial building built in the 1920’s, neoclassical and rock solid. It originally served as a ritzy barbershop that charged a whole twenty cents for a cut and a straight-razor shave, with living quarters above for the owner. Word has it that venture lasted forty years before the owner sold it for a short-lived retirement in Florida.
The building exchanged hands several times after that, operating as a cigar shop, a pawnshop, a video store, and finally as a place to find over-priced, vintage celebrity clothing, sweat stains and all.
From what I was told, two guys got into an argument over a BeeGees shirt worn at the L.A. Forum for the live concert recording in 1976.
They get into a punch up and the shirt suffers, gets torn, sending sequins and old poly bits flying in all directions. One guy pulls a knife. The floor is stained with blood, and a murder charge is laid.
The owner of the building was convinced the place was cursed. He was so shaken that he was willing to dump the place below market value.
It was my ex-partner in the CPD who had investigated the murder-suicide. He knew that I had started my fledgling detective agency out of the trunk of my MG.
It only took a few phone calls and one senile bank loans officer before I was scrubbing out the blood stains, arranging mismatched office furniture, and over-watering two big palm ferns.
I rent the top floor out to Ms. Zelda, a fifty-something black lady who does psychic readings for ninety bucks a shot. I can’t vouch for her extrasensory abilities, but judging from the number of lost faces in her waiting room, she’s a helluva businesswoman.
“You’re late again,” said Beth, her knees cracking as she rose from the bottom cabinet with a brown file.
I squinted my eyes and gave her a look that said I haven’t even had my morning coffee yet. Beth never complains about the pay, and I never complain about her smart mouth, so I figure we’re about even.
“Mr. Ching is here to see you,” she said, handing me the file and a steaming mug that had still had bits of grounds floating near the top.
“You know that’s not his last name,” I said.
“Why a grown man calls himself ‘Cha Ching’ is beyond me.”
“It’s the sound of money,” I said. “Sound a cash register makes.”
“It’s juvenile.” she replied.
“Give me a few minutes, then show him to my office.”
She nodded then returned to her filing.
I sat down at my desk, opened the file, and spread out the pictures like playing cards at a blackjack table. Mr. Ching was going to be surprised.
My clients always are.
A few moments later, my doorway was filled with six-and-a-half feet of robust African heritage. He was dressed in a shiny, black silk suit, the kind a rock star might wear to an awards show.
His shirt was open to the third button, but it was still taught around his neck. His head, the size of a bowling ball, was shaved mirror smooth. He carried a lot of weight, but in a powerful way, like an NFL linebacker.
He smiled, revealing a platinum tooth, but left his sunglasses in place.
“Dee-tective Jack,” he chuckled.
Ching got a kick out of the fact that I was dismissed from the police force. Figured we were blood brothers I guess.
“Have a seat Ching.”
“Don’t mind if I do.”
He lowered himself into the chair. The vinyl creaked but held its form. He surveyed the pictures laid out on my desk, snatched off his shades, and put his face closer to the desk.
“What’m I looking at, Jack?” he asked.
“She’s not cheating on you,” I said. “There’s no rich white guy, no scrawny accountant with jungle fever.”
“Where’s she going into there?”
“Kennedy-King College.”
“What’n hell for?”
“Computer information systems. It’s a part-time diploma program.”
His jaw dropped, dragging his eyes down with it. He slumped in his chair, like a six year old who just had his trip to Disneyland cancelled.
“Cool,” he said, though I could tell it wasn’t. It would have been easier for him to deal with infidelity. Maybe he’d slap Candi around a bit, then send a few thugs to find her lover, remove the guy’s capacity to entertain another man’s wife. He could manage the situation, bring it back under control.
But Ching hadn’t anticipated that she might want to improve herself, educate herself beyond what she knew or what Ching told her about the world. Education was a time bomb and when it went off, she would realize that a man like Ching, big and brawny, was simply a barrier to her own freedom.
“You sure?” he asked, rolling his eyes up to meet mine.
“I checked with the Registrar, she’s signed-up. I sat in on a couple of classes. She’s been studying alright.”
He nodded and rocked back and forth in the chair. He had hired me because he figured that she’d recognize any one of the goons who worked for him. Now it didn’t matter either way.
“She smart then?”
“I reckon.”
“That bitch,” he said.
I stayed quiet.
He drew his hands over his head, like he still had hair. “What do I owe ya?”
“An even grand.”
Before he could reach into his pocket, someone started shouting in the lobby. The words, firecracker loud, bounced around the office and rattled the smoked glass partitions like a small California tremor: Where the fuck is that goddam Riley...I don’t believe it...you’re lying...you lie...you lie...where is he goddammit!
I grabbed the snub-nosed .38 from my desk drawer and burst through my office door and into the lobby.
The skinny guy turned his head toward me, paused for a moment and tried to focus through a set of Coke bottle lenses. He was holding a full-length shotgun with his wispy left arm. He let the weapon hang awkwardly in the air, pointing it at Beth’s mid-section.
Poor judgement on his part.
Beth took the opportunity to fill the space between the guy’s eyes and his glasses with a stream of pepper mace designed for angry black bears. As the guy brought his hands toward his scorching eyes, she snatched the gun from his loose grip, swung it around by its barrel, and skull-cracked him with the wooden stock.
He shrieked like a schoolgirl at a horror flick, covering his head with his pasty arms as he collapsed into the fetal position on the old lino.
I raised my eyebrows at Beth. Ching was behind me chuckling and making whistling noises.
“What?” she said. “My ex-husband used to pull that crap on me all the time.”
Her face was flushed though she wasn’t breathing hard. She was calm for once, without that jittery impatience she usually carries deep in her jaw.
“Who is this asshole?” she asked.
I walked over to him and kicked him over onto his back. I peeled his hands away from his face, and he increased the pitch of his yelping.
“Ah, Mr. Bukowski,” I said. “You’ve been a very bad boy.”
“Screw you Riley,” he sobbed.
Beth handed me a couple of plastic zip ties. I squeezed his wrists together and jerked the plastic strip hard, so it cut into his skin like a cheap pair of steel handcuffs. I kicked his legs together and did the same to his ankles. He squirmed like a roped calf, spit a few obscenities, then threatened to sue me for unlawful confinement.
It all came to squeaky halt when Ching stepped on the guy’s throat.
“This little white fucker’s givin’ me a headache,” he said. He peeled off ten Benjamin Franklins from a thick wad of cash, like he was spinning sheets off a roll of toilet paper.
He handed them to me and thanked me for my time.
He then peeled off two more for Beth. “That’s for the enta-tainment, sweetheart,” he said, handing her the bills.
“Thank you Mr. Ching,” she said, throwing me a smartass look with her thinly plucked eyebrows.
“You’re welcome,” he replied. “And you little man, you be nice to Dee-tective Jack and Ms. Beth. ‘Cuz I don’t believe you ever experienced pain delivered by a crazy nigger.”
Ching pressed hard on Bukowski’s neck, turning the geek’s face purple. Satisfied, he released him and wiped his shoe on the lino to rid his leather soles of the salty sweat. Bukowski coughed and sputtered, but his foul mouth was silenced.
“Be cool,” said Ching, as he exited out the door and into the big Town Car waiting for him at the curb.
Beth slipped the two hundred bucks into the top of her bra and said, “You going to tell me why this guy came in here looking for you?”
“His name is Garth Bukowski, an ex-computer programmer with dreams of financial independence. One of my first files. Before your time.”
“Didn’t answer my question,” she said, fixing her hair.
“He collected long term disability checks for a bad back. Insurance company figured that a guy couldn’t be permanently injured from sitting on his ass all day.
So after they hired me, I showed up at his place in my van. I told him he’d won two, thirty-two inch television sets in the Clearinghouse Sweepstakes. Told him that the boxes were in my van, but I couldn’t unload them on account of my high blood pressure.
Our boy Bukowski here goes out to my van and he starts drooling when he sees two big Sony boxes. He hauled a hundred and fifty pounds of bricks up his steps, and down a flight of stairs to his den. I filmed the whole thing.”
“Must’ve been a quick trial,” said Beth.
“Jury members laughed when they saw the tape,” I said. “I bet his parole officer is going to hit the roof over his little stunt here today.”
“I’ll call the cops,” said Beth.
Bukowski’s thrashing had knocked over two chairs and sent the magazines skidding across the floor. I started to straighten things up when a small shadow darkened the strands of sunlight leaking through the Venetian blinds. I raised my head and caught a set of wide eyes peering between the slats and into the lobby.
They were vaguely familiar, and the sinking feeling in my gut told me that my day was about to get a lot more complicated.
Chapter 3
She entered and unbuttoned her black fur coat, revealing a cream silk dress that clung to her like a second layer of skin. Her patent pumps added three inches to her legs and a deep curve to her torso.
Her face was painted in a way that slimmed her thick nose and raised her cheekbones out from her rounded cheeks. Her hair was tamed, long curls pulled downward and sprayed in place, but ready to burst free in a gust of Chicago wind.
My eyes returned to her face. Something had once ripped a thin line from her eye socket to the edge of her mouth. Looked like a tiny meteor had slid across her cheek, leaving a shallow crater in its wake before it disintegrated into dust.
I wondered why she hadn’t sought out one of a hundred Chicago plastic surgeons who could erase it with one swipe of a scalpel.
I could only imagine that some people hold onto their wounds like a security blanket, staying wrapped in them no matter how ragged or dirty they become.
“Didn’t pay his bill on time?” she asked, nodding toward Bukowski.
“Something like that,” I said. “What can I do for you Mrs. Graves?”
She raised her eyebrows, “You know my name,” she said. Not surprised, just matter-of-fact.
“I read the papers.”
“Reporters,” she said, tossing her hand in the air. “Are you Jack Riley?”
“Yeah.”
“May we speak in private?”
I gestured toward my office, “After you.”
She slipped off her coat and held it out in front of her, waiting for an offer that didn’t come. After a few moments, she folded the thin pelts in her lap and she sat down. She pinned her knees together and propped her legs to the side, displaying her sinewy calf muscles.
I eased back in my chair and put my feet up on the corner of the desk. She looked at me like I’d just belched a jingle from the latest beer ad.
I didn’t care. One of the advantages of signing your own checks.
“It’s two hundred an hour,” I said. “Plus expenses.”
“You don’t even know why I’m here?”
“I’m a private investigator. People don’t come here for the sparkling conversation.”
“Still...”
“I saw the article four or five days ago.”
She raised her hand to her mouth.
“Erin Graves was a relation I presume?”
She nodded and whispered, “She’s my – was my – sister.”
“I’m sorry for your loss,” I said, passing her a box of tissues from the credenza.
“Thank you,” she said, her voice breaking. She remained silent, fearing one more word would release the floodgates of emotion brewing behind it.
I continued to speak. “As I recall, your sister was found in an alley near State Street. Reporter said it was a suspected drug overdose, a reasonable conclusion given that particular location.”
She moved her head from side-to-side, dropped her jaw to her chest, then began speaking softly.
“I’ve been speaking to the police, several times per day. They made a preliminary investigation and concluded my sister had overdosed. I insisted otherwise and the Sergeant, he told me that they lack of manpower, how they’d like to help but they just can’t justify the resources.
I went down to the precinct, demanded answers. Well, they treated me no better than a common criminal. Put me in a little room, told me to cool off. A few minutes later, a detective entered, Detective Murray. He was nice, he gave me your card, told me to keep it quiet as it was against police rules.
He said you never had a murder case go cold, not a single one in ten years. He said you had entered the private sector, and that you were discreet, that you could be trusted with sensitive tasks that could attract media attention.”
“He also said your fees were reasonable,” she said, looking up at me.
“You’ve got twenty-three hours of my time in that coat alone,” I said. “A downtown firm with marble floors and original paintings on the wall would cost you twice as much.”
“Very well,” she said. She grinned slightly, the corners of her mouth forming tiny crimson fishhooks.
I pulled my feet down, rocked myself closer to the desk and pulled out a notepad. She was a paying client now.
“You don’t believe your sister overdosed,” I said.
“Absolutely not.”
“Was she a drug user?”
“No...yes...I mean not for a long time.”
I motioned for her to continue.
“Erin had a heroin addiction, but she overcame it months ago. My father spent fifty thousand on a private treatment center.”
“You feel she’d been rehabilitated?” I said.
“I assure you Mr. Riley, she had conquered her demons.”
“Fair enough.” I didn’t feel assured, but she was paying the bill. “Did the police find any signs of trauma?”
“Just some bruising.”
“Has the autopsy been performed?” I asked.
“Supposed to be this week, backlog or something,” she said, holding her hand up to her mouth again, ready to punch back at the emotions that were swelling.
“Any idea why Erin was found in that part of town?” I asked.
“There was no reason for her to be there. Her townhouse is miles away on Lakeshore. Even when she was using, she’d call for a delivery. Some bastard in a Lexus would show-up like bloody FedEx.”
“Did she have any outstanding debts?” I asked.
“Mr. Riley. My father is Winfield Graves, the Third. Our family hasn’t had any sort of debt for three generations.”
Daddy had inherited a fortune that had sprung from the inside of a hundred million pickle jars. Like most men of leisure, he had purchased a seat in the U.S. Senate.
“I voted for him,” I lied.
She nodded, thinking she was sharing the moment with a Republican. She didn’t realize that I was an avowed atheist when it came to national politics – I didn’t believe in any party line.
“Tell me Erin’s story,” I said.
Mrs. Marsha Graves bent my ear for the next hundred bucks. The way I understood it (which wasn’t exactly the way she told it), Marsha and Erin had competed for attention from Winfield Graves. Marsha won the old man’s affections by keeping her mouth shut, graduating from Princeton and marrying a fellow with the right pedigree.
Erin tried a different approach by getting kicked out of three Ivy League schools, dating Marilyn Manson types, and finally turning to drugs. She had caused considerable embarrassment to the family and used up more than her share of the trust fund. She had been clean for six months prior to her death, at least that’s what Marsha claimed.
I took down a list of her friends and lovers, her home address, her physician at the treatment center, and a description of her ex-dealer who Marsha had seen one time.
“Do you have a picture of Erin?” I asked.
Marsha had anticipated the question, and pulled from her purse a dog-eared photograph containing Erin’s thin face perched atop a spring dress. The picture had been torn from a larger group photo. A disembodied arm rested across Erin’s shoulders, the hand dangling down toward her right breast.
“Where’s the rest of this picture?” I asked.
“That’s the most recent picture of her. We all posed for a family photo last spring. It’s eleven-by-fifteen, I didn’t think you’d want the whole thing.”
I shrugged. It was good enough.
“Mrs. Graves, I have to prepare you for the possibility that Erin’s death was accidental, that she may have slipped back into old habits. Hiring a private detective won’t magically reveal any sinister plots, it won’t make a bad situation any better. The truth may not fit with that theater production playing in your mind right now.”
“You sound just like my husband, Mr. Riley. I’m not a delicate flower who wilts at disappointment. Whatever you discover, it will be money well spent. I’ll expect an update in the next few days.”
I nodded.
“Do you require a retainer?” she asked.
“I’m not a lawyer, Mrs. Graves. Besides, you’ve seen what happens to people who don’t pay their bills on time,” I grinned, motioning toward the lobby where Bukowski was still sobbing.
“Indeed,” she said, rising from her chair.
I stood and walked around the desk and performed my client service routine by holding her coat while she her slipped arms through the sleeves.
“Thank you, Mr. Riley,” she said.
“I’ll be in touch,” I said, as I walked her to the front door and watched her totter down the sidewalk, her heels clicking like a jazz drummer tapping out five-four on a hi-hat.
“Nice to see the clientele finally going up market,” said Beth, without looking away from her computer screen.
“Just a nice coat and pair of shoes,” I said.
Before I could say anything else, the chimes on the front door chirped like a broken harp.
“Son-of-a-bitch,” I said.
“Hello to you too, stranger,” he said. “When I heard the call come over the radio I couldn’t resist.”
I walked over to my ex-partner Detective Thomas Murray and put out my hand. He grabbed it and pulled me in tight, like a father might hug his wayward kin. Murray had wanted to leave the force in protest when I was discharged, but I wouldn’t let him.
A cop in trouble doesn’t take drag his partner under. He squirms loose and takes it on the chin for the both of them.
“Place looks good, except for that piece of shit on your floor over there,” said Murray, nodding toward Bukowski.
“Guy was looking to pepper me with a twelve gauge. But he didn’t count on Beth’s aversion to men with guns.”
Beth stuck her little pink tongue out at me from behind her computer screen.
Not the first time.
“Real fine girl you’ve got there,” said Murray.
“Yeah, she’s something alright.”
Murray walked over to Bukowski and told him all about Miranda. Bukowski coughed out a string of insults covering the entire gamut of bodily excrement.
“I’ve heard funnier,” said Murray. “Looks like you’re comfortable where you are.”
We sat in the lobby and drank coffee while Murray took our statements. Afterwards, Murray brought me up to speed on all the office gossip. The love affairs, the bad cops, the broken careers: it was all unnerving for me.
The memories were still too sharp and they jabbed at something inside me, putting a grimace on my face. Murray noticed my expression and changed the subject.
“Looks like business is booming,” he said.
I wasn’t sure if he was just being polite or if the fact that I had hired an assistant impressed him. It couldn’t have been the office décor.
“People always want answers to something. But most times they’re too afraid of what they might find out. So they hire me to rip the bandage off quick while they close their eyes and think happy thoughts.”
“Noble.”
“Not really. But it pays the bills.”
“You know Jack, you just have to ask if you need anything.”
He was talking about money.
But I needed something else. I needed a peek at the ugly secrets that you can find on a cop’s desk.
“Erin Graves.” I said.
“You mean that rich kid who OD’d in your neck of the woods?”
“That’s the one.”
Murray shifted in his seat, swirled the coffee in his mug and downed it like it was a shot of tequila.
“Not my beat. I heard about it through public affairs, though. They were expecting some major media coverage. But the Tribune only ran a small cutline under the fold. Some guys say her old man put a lid on it, but who knows nowadays.”
“Anything in the case file?”
“I doubt there’s any case file to speak of. It was a drug overdose. Did her old man hire you?”
“I can’t say, Tom.”
“Shit, Jack. You’re sounding like a goddam lawyer.”
“Nothing personal, customers just prefer it that way.”
Murray shrugged and looked at his watch.
“The stiff is still with the ME,” said Murray. “You should call him Jack, it’s been too long.”
“I know, I know...”
“Call him. In the meantime, I’ll find out what I can when I get back to the station.”
He stood and whatever thoughts were in his head had shifted his eyes to some distance place. He walked over to Bukowski, pulled out a penknife and cut the zip tie from his ankles.
He left his wrists tied behind his back and hoisted him up by his elbows, a move used by rough cops to inflict small torture on a perp. Bukowski winced and a tear shot from his swollen red eye, but he didn’t give Murray the pleasure of crying out.
“It was good seeing you again, Tom,” I said.
“You too, Jack. Let’s put a few back one night,” he said.
He pushed Bukowski out the front door and into the back seat of his black Crown Vic. He walked around to the driver’s side and gave me a salute before getting in.
I could see him talking into the handset of the police radio. After a few moments, he gunned the big V8 and squawked the tires off the curb and part way down 51st.
“Maybe now I can get some work done,” said Beth, sitting at the computer I bought from a local elementary school fundraiser.
I returned to my office and gathered my thoughts about the Rodriguez case. Domestic cases inevitably breed hard conversations with one spouse. I dialed her number and the phone rang seven or eight times. She answered just before I hung up.
“Mrs. Rodriguez?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“It’s Jack Riley.”
“Oh, hello Mr. Riley,” she said, her voice breaking slightly with anticipation. Same way it might if we were discussing test results from a hard lump.
I decided to skip any small talk. “I photographed your husband at the St. Michael’s mass last night.”
She inhaled three times in rapid succession, like she’d just been immersed in ice-cold water.
“Was he with anyone?”
“Yes he was. I observed him enter with a female companion at 6 P.M., they walked arm-in-arm, she rested her head on his shoulder while they walked up the steps. At 7:15 P.M. he exited the building, his companion was not with him. On your instructions, I did not follow them inside, so I can not confirm if anything untoward occurred therein. I’ll send you the photos I took.”
Mrs. Rodriguez had instructed me not to observe them inside the church. She felt her husband was highly suspicious and might figure out he was being followed.
“Rotten sonofabitch...”
“I can’t confirm if...”
“Doesn’t take a rocket scientist Mr. Riley. Cheap rotten bastard,” she said, her voice betraying the tears that were now streaming down her face.
“Something else occurred last night,” I said.
“I know. He tripped down the concrete steps,” she said.
“No. Your husband somehow spotted me. Attacked my vehicle then tried to attack my, uhh, partner.”
“That was you? You did that to him?”
“He was very aggressive, I had to defend myself...”
“What are you? Some kind of animal? His nose is broken in three places for chrissakes!”
“He had a bat...”
“If I wanted a hitman I would’ve hired one. Jesus Christ!”
Projection. Natural psychological phenomenon. Happened to me all the time when I was with the CPD. I’d have to tell a mother or father or wife or husband that their loved one was dead. Gone forever, sorry folks, we’re doing everything we can to find the one responsible.
A conversation like that can generate emotions deep in the belly, like coal in a fire locomotive. Sometimes those emotions would burst out from the grieving and hit me square on the chin. I never blamed them though – it was simply the result of information overload.
“I’m sorry if I injured your husband, Mrs. Rodriguez.”
“Sonofabitch,” she said, slamming down the phone and giving me a dial tone in the ear. She’d call back in a few days to apologize, and I’ll tell her it wasn’t necessary.
I figured that Mr. Rodriguez would soon be signing a deposit check for a furnished bachelor apartment in a building named ‘Casa Amore’ and ‘Place Du Monde’. Mrs. Rodriguez would get the house and car. Late at night she’d have moments when she regretted hiring me and finding out the truth about her husband.
Sometimes the unknown is easier to live with.
•••
I dug through one of the file cabinets. I found the white folder labeled ‘Medical Examiner’. It contained various names, contact numbers and a picture that shouldn’t have been in there.
I held it up like a small, paper window that had framed a moment and protected it from the onslaught of time. The five men were half-smiling, pleased to be leaving Grenada, but mourning the innocence they had buried on that Caribbean island. I closed my eyes and the smell of nutmeg and scorched skin filled my head.
Images flashed in my mind like a 1920’s talkie. A body torn in half by machine gun fire, draped over the twisted branches of a stunted spice tree. A lone combat boot attached to a single leg. An enemy soldier, surrounded, who turned his weapon on himself.
I rubbed my face and slipped the picture in my coat pocket. I took the file to my desk and punched out a phone number.
“Dr. Mason speaking.”
“They’ve got you answering the phones now?” I said.
“Jack Riley? Jesus, where’ve you been?”
“Hung my own shingle.”
He paused for a moment, then said, “Private investigator?”
“Yeah.”
“Wow, Maltese Falcon and shit.”
“Something like that. Listen Scotty, you got a deceased there by the name of Erin Graves?”
“Sure, just finished sewing her back up.”
“Autopsy done then?”
“Yeah, I’m not going back in.”
“Anything you can tell me?”
“Why?”
“Part of a case I’m working on.”
“Is that right?”
“Cops figure it’s an OD. You find anything different?” I asked.
He paused again, but much longer this time. He was weighing his answer against his professional ethics.
He cleared his throat and said, “You better come down here, Jack.”
Chapter 4
Any other appointments this morning?” I asked Beth, as I put on my coat.
“Where are you off too?” she asked.
I looked at her until I got my answer.
“Nothing scheduled, but what if another psycho comes looking for you?”
“Tell him I’ll be back in a few hours.”
“What about me?”
“You can take care of yourself. Besides, I need you to run an errand for me.”
She exhaled her disapproval and added a groan for good measure.
“The pictures for the Rodriguez case, I left the film in the camera in my van. I need you to pick it up and have it developed.”
“They have digital cameras now. They don’t need film,” she said
“I like film. One hour photo place three blocks away.”
“Your neighborhood is a freakin’ war zone. I wouldn’t send my worst enemy there.”
“Yes you would. Take Clem along if you’re nervous. He might need a walk first, though. Don’t forget a baggy – it’s the law.”
Beth’s mouth formed an odd shape, like tinfoil had connected with one of her fillings. Clem wandered out from the back after having recognized one of the few words he knew.
Bukowski hadn’t interested him, but a walk was another matter.
I gave him a scratch on the head and told him not to give Aunt Beth too much trouble.
On my way out I heard Beth threatening to call Fair Labor Standards, how it must be illegal to make her pick up dog crap, and how she wanted danger pay for having to go to my street with that something or other mutt.
I jumped in the MG and made my way to the Eisenhower Expressway, which used to be called the Congress Expressway until some local politician wanted to get in good with the voters and figured Dwight D’s moniker would put the stars and stripes back into his campaign.
I think it worked out fine for him. But it didn’t help traffic congestion, which was worse than ever. The radio told me I was in a gapers’ delay – a traffic jam caused by the slack-jawed motorists who slow down and gawk at an accident as they drive by.
From all the flashing lights ahead, I figured it was a bad one. A few minutes later I joined the gapers and had a look myself, and afterward, I wished I hadn’t.
A minivan had lost a joust with an eighteen-wheeler. It was torn wide open, like a giant blue sardine can. There were three small mounds near the ambulance, already wrapped in black plastic. The paramedics’ uniforms were stained with blood, their faces ashen and hard against the blue sky.
A man wearing Transat Trucking overalls sat weeping in the back seat of a police cruiser. A fireman aimed a hose at the smoldering steel. All of them were caught in the strobe of a dozen flashing red and white lights, like performers in the final act of a macabre play.
We drove slowly past, each of us looking at the scene as if we ourselves could have been cast in it.
•••
I tried to shake off the images and made my way to the Cook County medical examiner’s office on West Harrison Street. Although I’d been there a hundred times before, the coldness of the architecture still struck me.
Thick concrete and thin windows absent any style or imagination. It was designed for the serious business of death and it showed.
I entered through the sliding glass doors that also swallow about a thousand bodies a year. The place smelled of strong disinfectant, peach air freshener, and a hint of rigor mortis.
The receptionist was turned away from me, but I recognized the tight black curls.
“Scot around, Linda?” I asked.
She jumped off her chair a little, spun around and had her head jerked back by her headset that was tethered to her phone.
“Jack, you silly boy!” she cackled. “Haven’t seen you in, like, forever.”
“Hung my own shingle.”
She scrunched her nose and tilted her head, like a puppy trying to decipher a new command.
“Scotty in?” I asked.
“Oh sure, I’ll page him.”
She called Dr. Scott Mason over the intercom and managed to sound professional doing it.
“So how’s Ginny?” asked Linda.
“Fine, I guess.”
She should have just asked if I was single. Wouldn’t have mattered, I didn’t want to encourage her anyway.
“That’s cool, you know,” she said.
“I know.”
Scotty came around the corner and slapped me hard on the shoulder blade.
“Sonofabitch Jack Riley,” he said. “Christ it’s good to see you.”
“I don’t come around enough,” I said.
“Who could blame you, this place even gives me the creeps sometimes,” he said, but I knew it didn’t.
He put his arm around my shoulder and walked me toward the cold storage. As we passed Linda, he nodded in her direction.
“You like her hair?” he asked in a whisper.
“Suppose.”
“Well it’s just as sweet down below,” he grinned.
“She reports to you, right?”
“In more ways than one.”
“You’re a lawsuit waiting to happen,” I whispered in his ear.
He threw his head back and tossed a few laughs into the false ceiling above.
“You only live once, Jack. It’s something you learn after working here ten years.”
I thought to myself, you only die once too, pal. After that, it’s too late to go back and do the right thing. My old man told me that before he could feel the cancer growing like thick weeds in his prostrate.
We entered the morgue through a couple of swinging doors and walked to the far end of a bank of refrigerators that held about twenty bodies in total. Scotty grabbed the handle of one compartment near the floor and slid the carriage all the way out.
He unzipped the bag and pulled the plastic down until it hung from her ankles. Her skin was a cobalt blue, like she had slowly frozen from the inside out.
Her stomach had sunk low, pulling the skin tight around her ribcage. Her mouth was open just a touch, about to release her last words to the world before death’s silence had stolen her last breath.
Her eyelids were strained, as if she had tried to awaken from a horrible dream. Her features were delicate and framed by wisps of auburn hair. The ugly stitches from the autopsy had sewn-up the tragedy lying before me.
“Ms. Erin Graves,” said Scotty. “Female, age twenty-eight, five-feet, six inches tall, one hundred ten pounds. Generally in good health, no fatal wounds, no abnormalities found with any internal organs.”
“So what killed her?”
“Noncardiogenic pulmonary edema.”
“Translation?”
“Her heart faltered and fluid accumulated in her lung tissues. It’s a clear sign of drug overdose when the patient has no previous heart problems.
So I ran a test for opioids and bingo, big levels of heroin. Not the good stuff either. Impure. Could have been Mexican mud, black tar, or a dozen other backyard concoctions.”
“That’s strange,” I said.
“It’s cheap, lots of junkies use it,” said Scotty.
“She could afford a lot better.”
Scotty shrugged his shoulders. All the junkies he’d ever seen on his table didn’t have more than a nickel in their jeans.
“So she OD’d and drowned in her own fluids,” I said.
“Yeah, but there is something odd.”
“What’s that?”
Scotty snapped on a pair of rubber gloves and ran a finger down the length of each of her inner arms.
“I found lots of scar tissue here, probably from years of injections. Found the same thing between her toes.”
“Doesn’t sound odd to me.”
“Except they were all completely healed over. I’d say she hadn’t used in at least six months, maybe more.”
“She could have snorted heroin.”
“Maybe. Couldn’t find any indicators in her nasal passages.”
“So how’d she overdose?”
“I got curious when I couldn’t find an injection site. I nearly gave up then happened to stumble across it.”
He ran his finger to her side and touched a small, black star wound that looked like an insect bite.
“Nasty needle hole right here, just below her ribcage. Went in hard on an angle and jerked around a bit before it came out.”
“You ever seen a dead junkie with a rough puncture in her side?” I asked.
“First time, but in this city nothing much surprises me anymore.”
“So are you calling this one accidental?”
“I have to under the circumstances, no evidence to say otherwise. You’re free to form your own conclusions, of course.”
“Thanks for the tour, Scotty.”
“Don’t mention it,” he said, as he zipped-up Erin’s body and slid the tray back into its cool, dark tomb. “It’s been too long between beers for old soldiers like us.”
“That reminds me,” I said.
I pulled the snapshot of our unit grimacing in the Grenada sunshine from my coat pocket and handed it to him.
He pulled off his rubber gloves and took the picture gently by its edge, like it was too hot in the middle. He stared at it for a few long moments.
“Prettiest fucking war zone in history,” he said.
“A lot of guys are walking around because of you.”
“I just plugged the holes back then, that’s all. Just a kid medic who puked at the sight of blood.”
He tried to hand it back to me but I wouldn’t take it.
“You sure?” he asked.
“Yeah, you keep it. I’ve got a copy.”
“Thanks Jack. I’ll put it on my fridge. It’ll give me a good kick in the ass on those days I’m feeling all sorry for myself.”
“Might help with the ladies, too” I said.
He laughed and slapped the picture a couple of times against his other hand.
“You said it, partner.”
•••
I sat in the MG, looked up at the blue sky and watched the clouds surf on the wind a mile up. They rolled by like giant white nomads, looking for a place to settle for a few days.
I wondered if Erin Graves had glimpsed at the heavens on her last day on earth, thinking that she had a lifetime of sunlight ahead of her.
When her lungs slowly filled with lymphatic fluid, what images had she held in her mind? The sky? Her sister? Her mother? Her lover? Or was it a series of dreamy photographs that flickered then waned, like tall shadows in a twilight forest?
I shook my head and ran my hand hard down my face. This wasn’t a good sign. I kept thinking more about the victim than any suspects in her death. I know what losing a sister feels like, and I know that the helplessness can eat you from the inside out.
I pulled my interview notes from my coat pocket. Marsha Graves had told me about Erin’s last boyfriend, a nightclub owner with a hot temper and a quick fist.
I’d found that the most fruitful investigations always started like a rock hitting the water: a big splash that works its way outward. You didn’t have to get too far from the center before people started asking for a lawyer.
I noted the address and chirped the tires. I was about to cast the first stone.
Chapter 5
Lincoln Park has come a long way since it first served as an army post surrounded by quicksand in 1824. Waves of hardworking German immigrants traded sweat and blood for industrial revolution wealth.
Money was cultivated, then harvested like Illinois corn husks. The finest shops latched onto the neighborhood like barnacles onto a ship’s hull. Chicago’s first nightclubs took root to mine the pockets of young and wealthy who lived off giant trust funds, never needing to get-up early for work.